Skankynavia: Bitchin' Brownies

Brownies come many a kind -- I like these particular ones because they're very light and discrete in flavour which means you can eat the whole cake and not feel overstuffed (even though you most certainly will be).

To me, brownies should be heavy, soggy, small bricks of chocolate. This is a recipe I've been playing around with for some time and made super basic, and whenever my friends sink their teeth into it they fall in love.

INGREDIENTS
100g butter (7 tblsp)
200g white sugar (little less than a cup)
2 eggs

60g white flour (1/4 cup)
1,5 tblsp cocoa powder
100 g walnut halves (1/2 cup)
1.5 tsp vanilla sugar
0.5 tsp baking powder
3 g salt (pinch more than a 1/2 teaspoon)

QUICK RECIPE
1. Melt the butter and mix it with the sugar and the eggs. Use an electric mixer.

2. Mix together all the dry ingredients and add it to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

3. Whisk it up real good.

4. Add walnut halves and mix it through using a spatula.

5. Find a good-sized baking pan (perhaps 18 x 26 cm or perhaps a bit smaller) and cover it with wax paper. Pour the dough.

Note: It's important that the pan isn't too small as you want the dough to flow out when melting and then rise up into a very low cake.

6. Bake at 175˚C / 350˚F for 20-30 minutes.

7. Decorate with powdered sugar, leaves, ice cream or white chocolate.

I might experiment next time with adding chopped dark chocolate bits.

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RECIPE + PHOTOS

I apologize for the yellowish, muted photos. Denmark is in its darkest period at this time of year and it's so overclouded that there's barely any good photo light in my kitchen even though I turn on all the electric light.



Most of these ingredients are organic, but normally it's hard to find that stuff in plain Danish supermarkets. I hope it gets easier. As usual Berkeley is far far away.

Also I personally prefer barn eggs (free-range) instead of organic eggs as barn chickens get more space, light and access to digging into the real ground. Organic chickens might live in small cages in the darkness and it would still be legal. So support your local barn chicken farm.


200g white sugar in my old-style kitchen scale.


Melt the butter before mixing. You don't have to melt it into an all gooey pool of fat, just soften it enough to make it mixable.


Spoons with vanilla sugar, baking powder and cocoa powder.


Mix all the dry ingredients together.


Add some sea salt.


Mix butter and white sugar.


Fluff it up.


Add barn eggs and mix...


...into a silky smooth butter texture.


Add the bowl with dry ingredients and mix it all up.


Now it's starting to look like chocolate cake dough.


Find a good baking tray and cover in baking paper. This is slightly too big, but rather that than too small.


Place the dough in the pan and off it goes into the preheated oven (175˚C / 350˚F). Don't worry too much about getting it all flattened out in the pan -- it will flow out by itself as it warms up.

Bake it...


...and then it will rise and fill out the bottom of the pan.


Bake for 20-30 minutes. Take it out and let it cool on a rack.


Cut into square pieces and serve with vanilla ice cream, green tea ice cream or sour cream. Or eat it right now.

Personally I prefer to let it sit for a good while -- it's almost better the day after when it's cooled down and become chunky and full of flavour.



Perfect for those long winter nights when you're prepping the holiday shopping lists, wrapping Christmas presents and in reality wanting to escape to the moon or Hawaii instead, no?